Friday, April 30, 2010

JUST SEVEN WASTED MINUTES?

DIRECTED BY DAVID FINCHER

STARRING: MORGAN FREEMAN, BRAD PITT, KEVIN SPACEY, GWYNETH PALTROW

I don’t really think this is going to be any sort of ‘review’ as such, I mean I watched a TV premiere and not a pause-rewind-play version, which means that I got what I got and maybe I didn’t get what they intended to tell me, and by ‘they’, I imply all the forces involved in conceiving, writing and sponging on the screen what I saw. Alternate endings, right? It sucks when I have to come to know of that; that a film is not entirely in the creator’s hands, and to then call the ‘creator’ a ‘creator’ sounds debatable to me.

Subtle thriller, serene Morgan Freeman, jumpy Brad Pitt who only clearly showcases some of the mannerisms he is to undertake as ‘Rusty’ Ryan in an upcoming project named ‘Ocean’s Eleven’, except that he knew to shave in that film, while the only thing he shaves in this are the hairs on his chest. No, I’m not depriving these people of credit for their performances, I’m only merely keeping this film on the ground as opposed to the helicopter ride people intend to take through it. I agree that it’s an eighth deadly sin called ‘idiocy’ to have expected any sort of emotional subtlety in a David Fincher flick, it’s a ninth called ‘hope’ to have thought Gwyneth Paltrow would do anything more in this film than bear a child and get killed. This is the guy who made the ‘Zodiac’ heroic while the lesser rated version showed the killer as he is and yet, was lesser rated. The most impact that Fincher managed was the employment of Howard Shore, who in turn chose to employ a certain John Sebastian Bach, and we strangely found it fulfilling. And it’s a shame having watched Kevin Spacey back in time, like through ‘21’ and ‘American Beauty’ and the intolerable ‘Usual Suspects’, this looks amateurish, but he certainly had his presence felt simply because he was Kevin Spacey, the one people expect a lot from and expectation never leads to disappointment, but a hallucination of false hope which is only sufficient.

So what am I saying, right, I mean with all this Hemingway bullshit greeting my disappointment, only to drench it further when I really wanted something else. A film is not democratic and if it can be, then I wasn’t looking at the right place. William Somerset is written to drop his gun down, David Mills is doomed to pull his trigger and John Doe is destined to win? ‘3:10 to Yuma’ is a film, ‘Phonebooth’ isn’t. Neither is this and I was happy that I can maintain my stand that David Fincher is destined to suck. That’s his deadly sin, a tenth as I write it to be.